I can give you a much quicker instructional tutorial on beating a Mara...learn to kite. IDK what the big deal is. I find this easy to do on my Vanguard, my Sage, and my Gunslinger. Guardians are probably the one AC that doesn't need to kite them. I can't speak to Scoundrels, Shadows, and Commandos, but half of the ACs I know for sure should be able to beat them 1v1. I really don't get all of the QQ over this class. Op healers and stealth in general are both more OP than Maras IMO. Also, the one thing that people complain about more than Maras is CC, and guess who has the least CC in the game? I laugh every time I'm kiting a bad mara and they decide to choke me when they don't have any dots or anything on me. It does like 1% dmg, and it doesn't let them close the gap on me at all. There is literally no reason to even break it. I just wait till they gently set me down, and resume kiting and blowing them up.

I'm just going to say I don't think people here value CC / utility enough. Sins have the best utility in the game. I don't care if they don't do as much dmg as Mara / PT, it's the CC and utility that wins games. They can taunt, guard, knock back, pull, mez, stun, and knock down. They also get some self heals, speed boost, CC immunity, and most importantly they get stealth. Those abilities do more to take nodes, defend nodes, carry the ball, prevent a score, etc. They have to be number 1 in any list. I also think everyone is ranking DPS Ops too low. They have a 4 sec stun on a 30 sec CD. They also get a knock down, an AOE mez, and a stealth mez. IMO when coordinated teams face each other, it's much more about the CC and utility than it is about raw dmg / healing numbers. I would take a team of Sins & Ops over a team of Maras any day.

Isn't Assault Plastique the highest dmg attack for that build? What's the general consensus on which is higher dps, builds with it or builds without it?

This is what I do too. I'll go over and fight as hard as I can and see how long I can stay up. I'm no free kill, and it's a lot more fun than sitting on my turret while they sit on theirs.

I will says that I've only seen this once. I was in a VS match, and there was 4 healers on the other team (we had 1). They won easily, and at the end of the match I looked through the stats and we had 0 kills. It was sad. In fairness, our team was a really bad pug, and we were up against a premade, but ouch. I kept marking healers, then I thought maybe I had marked the wrong ones b/c I kept seeing new ones. You'd try to focus a guy down, but he'd just get heals from the other 3. It was brutal. Like I said, though, we were a bad pug and would've gotten mopped up by any premade regardless of comp. 0 kills though...it was jaw dropping.

Agree w/ all of this. Sent / Marauder is the class of tradeoffs. We get very high melee DPS, but we trade it for no consistent ranged attacks. Vanguards and Scoundrels both have ranged attacks that can be used at 30m, and can both kite a Sent / Mara. I don't know about Shadows b/c I haven't played one, so I don't know what their range capability is, but I'm pretty sure they can at least 10m kite no problem. We get a stun, but the tradeoff is it's channeled. Everyone else can pop their stun on you and proceed to unload their biggest attacks, or to use that time to close distance or increase distance. Sents have to channel it the whole time so it can't be used as a gap closer, and you can't proceed to unload with high dmg attacks while they're stunned. We get a paladin bubble, but the tradeoff is 50% health. This pretty much relegates its usefulness to when you're at < 20% health. Still a nice skill, but once again there is always a tradeoff. We get a stealth, but the tradeoff is it's only a couple of seconds and if you do just about anything you pop out of stealth. If you pop your medpack, you get taken out of stealth. We have nice burst dmg, but the tradeoff is we have to ramp up to it. I'm pretty sure every other class (except Jugg) can unload their best attacks from the moment they see you. Sents have to build focus in order to use their best attacks. I think people look at our tool set and think, "They get high dmg, a stun, a bubble, burst, and stealth! OP!" But the reality isn't nearly as good as it sounds. Well that, and a lot of people I run into have no idea how to kite, so they just sit there and try to face tank me. Sent / Mara are definitely OP if you just stand still and mash buttons.

I think post 1.2 the key is that you either need at least 2 healers, or you need 1 really good healer with good support (guard, taunt, peels). Nothing more frustrating than stunning a healer and watching his health bar fill up b/c there's another healer healing him. If you're a healer and you're solo pugging it and end up in a group that doesn't support you, then I get the angst, but I think for healers with some backup they're still doing really well in 1.2. The worst beat down I've taken pugging post 1.2 was in a match against 4 healers. It was crazy. You would try to focus one down and he would always be getting heals from at least 1 other healer (if not more).

This is simply my opinion from being killed by these duos the most, but an Op / Sin duo can be deadly. Both can stealth, and between them they have a ton of stuns. Getting stunlocked to death by 2 guys you didn't even see coming is enough to make people rage quit. Very handy for capturing objectives. I'm not sure what spec is good for each one, but that's the tandem I would recommend.

Okay, so this is only partly on topic, but it occurred to me a few days ago that the PVP tanking is a little different in this game. I was playing my Vanguard and I was thinking that I actually want the other team to attack other members of my team, and not me. My guard puts up a 5% dmg reduction and splits the dmg taken, but isn't useful at all if I'm the one being attacked. Also my taunts take off 30% dmg from the attacker, but again it's as long as I'm not the one being attacked. IDK, tanks get more benefit in PVP from helping teammates who are being attacked then necessarily having their own very high survivability. Then again, I switched from my tank Vanguard to my Sent and noticed right away just how helpful heavy armor and a shield are, despite everyone's insistence that they don't do anything.

Not sure how many threads you need to start about Marauders / Sents, but I'll try to help you out since it seems like you're having a personal problem. When you see a Marauder as a Shield Tech Vanguard, you should not wait for him to Force Leap you. You have Charge. Why didn't you charge him? It also has a root on it, so you would've had the jump and the leg up on him. When you're not rooted, it's pretty easy to step out of his ravage. Strafe is setup on the Q and E keys @ default, but you can change those to more convenient ones if you want to. Pressing one of these keys will magically make Ravage dmg disappear. If you get caught off guard, you can simply use one of your two stuns to avoid it. You have an AOE stun on a 45 second CD which works nicely for this. Your advantage over a Mara is your range capability. If you stand in melee and go toe-to-toe you will probably lose. Charge him to root him, then start kiting him. Your Ion Cell does a 50% slow. You have 100% chance to trigger it with stockstrike. Which means every time he closes distance on you with a leap or whatever, you should stockstrike him in the face and keep running. While you run you can keep hitting him with Ion Pulse and your free attack (which both have a great chance to add the slow again). Once you get his health low, he will probably pop his 99% dmg reduction (if it's not on CD). Use your cryo grenade to let it fade off while not taking any dmg. Most of the time they have to eat the full stun b/c they already blew their CC breaker trying to chase you down. They really aren't as bad as you're making them out to be, but if you let them charge you, root you, and ravage you, and expect to beat them just face tanking them, then you're going to be disappointed. If you aren't comfortable kiting melee, then you probably rolled the wrong class. The good Maras will use their tricks to keep you in range, but the goal isn't to avoid ALL of their attacks, it's to avoid ENOUGH of their attacks. The way their dmg is setup, they have to use weak attacks to build focus for strong attacks. They also have abilities that buff other abilities for a certain period of time. For example, if they're Carnage spec, then Gore gives an armor pen buff for 6 seconds and Massacre gives a buff to their bonus attack for 6 seconds. Any GCDs you can make this miss out on by kiting during that time is huge.

I don't get how I can watch my resolve bar dropping while I'm being choked. How am I losing resolve while I'm still stunned? That doesn't make any sense to me. If I was at full resolve, then the stun shouldn't have gone off. If this is the stun that put me at full resolve, then how am I already losing it (while the stun is still in effect)? This is my only problem with it. It never seems to last 20 seconds (or however long people claim it's supposed to).

I concur.

I hate to break it to you, but there's 3 Harrowers. Be sure to wait for your CDs for each fight. They enrage when they get low health. Pretty sure it made them immune to stuns, and hit harder. Probably the buff you were seeing.

I've got several ACs to 30 (Vanguard, Sage, Commando, and Sent), and I can tell you that I feel like the Sent is the most powerful of them all. It is DEFINITELY the toughest learning curve though (with Commando probably being the easiest IMO). I'm up to 39 now having just used Kira as a companion. I preferred the speed of killing stuff with her to T7, so I never used him once I picked her up. Here's some tips that I've picked up along the way: When you're doing normal pulls, I always send her in to attack a different mob than I am. We'll both kill the first mob pretty quick, plus it splits up who is taking dmg. On regular mobs, I focus on using my attacks that incapacitate them. For example, I might send Kira to attack one, I put up rebuke and leap to the other one and immediately go into Master Strike. This knocks him out for the duration, which prevents him from doing any dmg, and also will take most regular mobs almost all the way down. Finish them off with Zealous Strike and then go to the third mob. I'll hit them with Blade Storm which will knock them out temporarily, and then Pommel Strike, and then just burn them down. Kira usually comes over from her mob about this time and so it only takes a couple of hits. Using this strat I can take down pulls really quickly while taking very little dmg, which lets me go straight to the next pull w/o needing to rest. Force Sweep, Blade Storm, and Master Strike will all keep them from dealing any dmg, and will set them up for a focus-free pommel strike (which hits really hard). You can also add in Opportune Strike when you get it. It can be used right after your leap (b/c it immobilizes them), and is once again no force and hits like a truck. You should be able to run through regular mobs really fast doing this with basically no down time. When facing strong / elite mobs it's a totally different priority. I rebuke, leap in, Overload Saber, Zealous Strike, Cauterize, then Slash. That should put up all your dots (Watchmen build), and then I Force Stasis. That will drain them down pretty good, while your dots tick. The whole time you won't take dmg, and if you have Zen up you will even heal a little. It also gives your stuff a chance to come back off of cooldown so you can run through a similar series again. The next time I get dots up I usually do Master Strike to fill the time waiting for stuff to come off of CD. Of course, use Rebuke, Saber Ward, and Passify, and interupt the big stuff. The priority here is getting your dots up. I use Slash instead of Blade Storm on these guys b/c it finishes the CD on Cauterize. Hope this helps. Sent is really a fun class to play if you like the style, but it's definitely not for everyone. In the end, play something you like. Good luck!

Agree about the bike ride. It takes way too long.